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Perfidy
Kallisti 'Bloodline Bane: the Heartless Curse' The blood of the Kallisti cannot cause Vinculums, denying them even the artificial love of the blood bond. The great majority of the Kallisti think this to be their only Curse. Their true Curse is that the Kallisti's Beast continually whispers to her that her friends, allies, and loved ones - even Touchstones - care nothing for the Kallisti and are only using her for their own ends. Declarations of love or affection ring false, and even simple statements sound tinged with deceit. No one cares for the Kallisti. No one loves her. And no one ever will. All Kallisti have the persistent Paranoia Condition, which may never be resolved. 'Perfidy' Perfidy is the art of social destruction raised to the level of a vampiric Discipline. It undermines trust, dissolves interpersonal connections and shatters the bonds that hold society together. This Discipline's techniques are relentlessly, insidiously destructive, all the better to suit the Kallisti ambition of tearing it all down. Perfidy operates by means of a single base power and then modifications, all of which cost Vitae. The amount of Vitae that the Kallisti spends on a single use of Perfidy is not limited by the Kallisti's Vitae-per-Turn, as the Kallisti can spend additional Vitae before the activation of Eris's Touch to 'charge' the curse with particular potency. '• Eris's Touch' The Kallisti don't precisely worship Eris, but they respect her greatly, and so it is fitting that they should name the cornerstone of their abilities in her honor. Few Kallisti realize that Eris's Touch operates by infecting others with the Kallisti's own Bloodline Curse. Such things occur only to others, never to the Kallisti themselves. Eris's Touch, name notwithstanding, does not require physical contact. It is activated by simply conversing with the target (an exchange as simple as 'Hello, how are you?' 'Fine' is sufficient, but both parties must say something). By nature, Perfidy is subtle, though using it against an Auspex-user triggers a Clash of Wills to notice Perfidy. : Cost: 1 Vitae : Dice Pool: Intelligence + Subterfuge + Perfidy vs. Composure + Blood Potency : Action: Instant : Duration: Scene : Dramatic Failure: The attempted activation results in a backlash that awakens the Kallisti's own Beast. The Kallisti immediately rolls for anger-induced Frenzy, requiring successes equal to their own Perfidy dots. : Failure: The target feels a certain sense of unease, perhaps the glimmerings of suspicion about those around them, but they are easily dismissed. : Success: Eris's Touch imbues the target with a measure of the Kallisti's own supernaturally-enhanced paranoia. They suffer the Paranoia Condition. : Exceptional Success: As above, but the Paranoia Condition lasts until sunrise. '•• Trojan Horse' Sometimes, the Kallisti doesn't want to awaken the target's paranoia right away. They'd rather have Eris's Blessing lie in wait, until the perfect moment to sow discord and heartache. : Cost: 1 Vitae : Dice Pool: None : Action: None This enhances Eris's Touch. Instead of activating immediately, the Kallisti set a trigger for when Paranoia comes into effect. The trigger can be absolutely anything, from 'when you talk to someone wearing red' to 'when the Prince compliments you on your successful resolution of the Dockyards situation,' but it must be an objective variable (in other words, 'when you feel sad' is not a valid trigger). A Kallisti can set more than one trigger, so long as they spend Vitae for each Trigger (1 Vitae per trigger). If the trigger does not occur by sunrise, then the power fades away unactivated. '••• Agamemnon's Reward' An hour's worth of paranoia is all well and good, but there's only so much damage that the Kallisti can do in so brief a time. In order to truly shred a target's social relationships, the Kallisti needs time. This power gives the Kallisti that time. : Cost: 1 Vitae : Dice Pool: None : Action: None : Duration: Kallisti's (Blood Potency + Perfidy) in nights This enhances Eris's Touch, increasing the duration of Paranoia to the Kallisti's (Blood Potency + Perfidy) nights. If combined with Trojan Horse, then Paranoia may trigger at any point during this duration, but lasts for only a single scene once activated. Agamemnon's Reward may only be applied once to a single Eris's Touch. '•••• Discordia' With this power, the Kallisti may now expand their aura of discord upon an entire gathering, leaving nothing but recrimination and anger in their wake. : Cost: 2 Vitae : Requirements: Discordia cannot be combined with Trojan Horse, Agamemnon's Reward, or the Curse of Paris : Dice Pool: None : Action: None This enhances Eris's Touch, applying the Carrier Condition in addition to the Paranoia Condition. Anyone who speaks someone suffering both these Conditions must roll Composure + Blood Potency against the original successes of the Kallisti, gaining both the Paranoia and Carrier Conditions if they fail. Discordia can be used to transform any gathering into a snake pit of deceit and suspicion. Once a gathering achieves a certain critical mass of people affected by Paranoia (25% will usually do it), all useful business grinds to a halt. Brainstorming sessions produce no ideas, group discussions descend into acrimony and blame-slinging, corporate meetings produce no plans of action, no one volunteers for anything, and so forth. This may even lead to violence, but only if the environment was already conducive to it (a pub or political protest, say), and rarely anything more severe than a fistfight. '••••• Curse of Paris ' Up until now, the Kallisti has only affected the perceptions of those unfortunates targeted by Perfidy. With the Curse of Paris, however, the Kallisti mirror Paranoia within and without, slicing away the bonds of affection wherever they exist. This power turns brother against brother, husband against wife, parents against children and childe against sire. This is the power that earns the Kallisti bloodline its infamous and terrible reputation (where it has any reputation at all). : Cost: 2 Vitae : Dice Pool: None : Action: None This enhances Eris's Touch. The false impression effect of Paranoia now not only affects the target, but also everyone who speaks with them. Given the already quite severe paranoia of most Kindred, the subject of the Curse of Paris may swiftly find himself outcast from Kindred society, if not the subject of a Blood Hunt. 'Conditions' ''Paranoia'' You think the world is out to get you. It might actually be out to get you, but paranoia is not a survival reflex. It's a crippling, emotionally wearying sensation of constant suspicion and fear, and doesn't really help you spot any actual plots (if anything, the false positives paranoia identifies are even worse for your ability to notice enemies than not paying attention). The character takes a -2 to all Social rolls as they second-guess and suspect everyone they come in contact with, and a -1 to all Mental rolls from the constant stress and distraction. : Resolution: A Touchstone or True Friend may talk the character down from their Paranoia as an extended Presence + Persuasion action (5-10 minutes per roll, requiring 5 successes for each success achieved when the Condition was originally imposed). Being alone in a Safe Place puts the penalties of Paranoia into abeyance. : Beat: The character sabotages himself or offends someone else due to their paranoia. : Expiration: Scene, though it may be longer ''Oizys's Blessing'' Whether it is due to Oizys's divine blessing, the invocation of the Beast, or the surfacing of the latent cruelty in the human, your character becomes crueler, harsher. The character gains a Vice such as Cruel, Callous, or Hateful for the remainder of the scene (if they already had this vice, they get 2 Willpower for fulfilling their vice instead of the normal 1). :Resolution: Someone is notably kind to the character, without prompting or expectation of reward. :Beat: The character hurts one of his friends or loved ones in a lasting fashion (this may be physical, or it may be mental or social cruelty, but it should have ramifications beyond the end of the scene). :Expiration: Scene 'Devotions' ''Touch of Oizys (Majesty •, Perfidy •) Little known compared to her most famous sister, Oizys was the goddess of Woe, Pain, and Despair, a child of the night-goddess Nyx like Eris. It is from her Roman name that the word ''Misery comes, and it is Oizys that the Kallisti call upon to reward cruelty and malice. : Cost: 1 Vitae : Dice Pool: None : Action: Instant : Duration: Scene For the rest of the scene, the character gains the Oizys's Blessing Condition. This Devotion costs 5 Beats ''Passion Fugue (Perfidy •••) With this power, the vampire nullifies all emotional ties her target has to his own social network or even his own life in general. Memories of home, friends and family — including Allies, Mentors and the like — are washed away by a tide of numbing amnesia. Moreover, covenant loyalties, job responsibilities and similar obligations all fall away, as the target rips himself from any social pattern he was a part of, letting the Kallisti play the part of the Pied Piper, calling her target away from the existence he once knew. : '''Cost': 1 Vitae :Dice Pool: Wits + Persuasion + Perfidy vs. Composure + Blood Potency :Action: Instant :Duration: (Successes) Nights : Dramatic Failure: The devotion backlashes against the Kallisti, in a singularly unpleasant fashion. The penalties from the Kallisti's Paranoia Condition are doubled for the rest of the night, while the subject of the Devotion has the sudden and very firm suspicion that the Kallisti tried to do something to them. He might not know what, but something happened. : Failure: The subject grows distracted, and might need a moment to remember the names of friends or loved ones for the rest of the night, but they come to him after a moment of thought. : Success: The subject is cut off from all positive emotional connections to his past and current social network and anything he has a positive emotional connection to (home, church, hobbies, social causes, even addictions). For the rest of the night, the subject is unable to tap into his emotional background; he cannot muster a desire to return home, affection for his loved ones or any fears for their safety or well-being. He cannot spend Willpower to augment actions involving his old friends or family. : Exceptional Success: The Devotion overcharges, plunging the subject into a paranoid oblivion. The target forgets everything ''to which he has any strong emotional connection (positive or negative). He forgets home and haven, he forgets his family, his friends, his enemies, anyone about whom the character has strong feelings. He may vaguely recognize their faces, but they are strangers to him in all other ways. He has no memories of them or emotional connection with them whatsoever. He gains the Amnesia Condition, forgetting everything and everyone to whom the target has a strong emotional connection, for good or ill. He becomes unable to spend Willpower to augment any action not directly linked to his immediate survival or gratification. This Devotion costs 10 Beats ''Golden Apple (Majesty •, Perfidy ••••) With a single golden apple, Eris started the Trojan War. This devotion doesn't quite rise to that level, but a Kallisti can certainly start a fight with it. In order to use this devotion, the Kallisti must anoint an object with at least a drop of her own Vitae, which may require a bit of sleight of hand or some strategic Obfuscate. : Cost: 3 Vitae :Dice Pool: Wits + Expression + Majesty :Action: Instant :Duration: Scene : Dramatic Failure: The Kallisti's effort goes badly awry, as her vitae burns the object like acid, inflicting (Perfidy) points of structure damage upon it. Given that the object was probably a valuable one and that the Kallisti is probably in a public space, this is not a desirable state of events. :Failure: People may feel irrationally attracted to the object, but the supernatural affection is too weak to have any mechanical effect. :Success: The object is transformed into what the Kallisti call a Golden Apple. Everyone wants it, and everyone wants to take it away from whoever else has it. This has a few effects: *The object's apparent Resource value increases by half the successes rolled, rounded up. *Whoever possesses the object at the end of the scene gets a single Beat -- provided that the object has changed hands unwillingly at least once during the scene. The Kallisti cannot get this Beat. *Anyone in the object's presence who does not have the object and who has fewer dots of Composure than the Kallisti's successes suffers the Deprived Condition, which can only be removed by possessing the object. *The object becomes very difficult to hide. Any effort to conceal it, whether by mundane stealth or by magic, suffers a penalty equal to successes rolled. :Exceptional Success: Extra successes are their own reward. This Devotion costs 15 Beats Animus (Auspex ••, Majesty ••••, Perfidy •••••) This Devotion turns its target’s loyalties and affections inside out, transforming friendship into loathing, respect into disgust, trust into suspicion, loyalty into resentment and love into hate. Animus undermines every feeling that ties an individual into his social environment, and poisons his mind against anyone toward whom he was previously on amicable terms, transforming even a well-connected, law-abiding individual into a nearly sociopathic rebel and loner. In order to activate this devotion, the Kallisti must lean in and whisper into the target's ear. Nothing can hear the words that the Kallisti says, and neither the Kallisti nor the target will remember just what those words were later, but with them the Kallisti is able to shred the subject's very identity. A few Kallisti say, quite seriously, that in that moment of perfect discord, the Kallisti is channeling the divine spirit of Eris. : Cost: 6 Vitae :Dice Pool: Intelligence + Empathy + Perfidy vs. Composure + Blood Potency :Action: Instant :Duration: Scene : Dramatic Failure: The Kallisti inspires loathing, but at the wrong target -- the subject's Frenzy targets the Kallisti, as he is filled with a sense of deep realization and loathing of what the Kallisti tried to do. :Failure: Whatever black power allows the Kallisti to twist their subjects very loves is conspicuous by its absence, and the Kallisti finds themselves with nothing to say. :Success: With a single, divinely-inspired insight, a successful Kallisti leads her subject to a terrible epiphany. The subject’s every loyalty turns inside out. The more love that existed, the more powerful the hatred that takes its place. This effect works on all bonds, including the Vinculum, which this power transforms into a malevolent animosity. This power usually affects all of the subject’s loyalties or emotional bonds, but the Kallisti may be more tactical in her approach and sever some bonds while leaving others intact. Any ghoul affected by this power is almost certain to become a threat to his regnant, and a dangerously knowledgeable one at that. : Mechanically speaking, this operates as a hatred-inspired Frenzy, even if the subject is a ghoul, mortal, or non-vampire supernatural (characters with a power stat treat it as Blood Potency for the purposes of Frenzy bonuses, while mortals are treated as having a Blood Potency of 1). The Frenzy is targeted at everything the subject formerly loved (unless the Kallisti excluded these emotional bonds from the Animus), and the target will set about destroying everything he had once loved to the best of his ability. As in a normal Frenzy, the target has absolutely no self-preservation or consideration of long-term consequences, and thinks only of how to best hurt that which he had once loved. The subject chooses his own targets based on how much affection he had once borne for them and on how easily he can hurt them. : As with a regular Frenzy, a Touchstone can try and talk a character down from Animus... though they might have a hard time doing it since Touchstones are usually the first targets of the pseudo-Frenzying subject of Animus. :Exceptional Success: The subject's Blood Potency or effective Blood Potency is increased by 3 for the purposes of their Frenzy. This Devotion costs 25 Beats. 'Source' The original version of the Kallisti can be found in Invictus, p162. All credit for this beautiful Blood & Smoke revision goes to the incomparable NeoTiamat. Category:Bloodlines Category:Unique Disciplines Category:Translations Category:Kallisti